


What's Real Isn't Always True

by FictionalFeather



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: LiveJournal Meme, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-19
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-15 12:40:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4607130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FictionalFeather/pseuds/FictionalFeather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Of course we’re friends,” Lavi had said to Allen’s incredulous stare and Lenalee’s knowing giggle. </p>
<p>Because weren’t they? Didn’t Kanda tolerate his presence better than everyone else? Hadn’t he grown accustomed to Lavi seeking him out? Weren’t those icy glares that much softer when they were pointed toward Lavi? Weren’t they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's Real Isn't Always True

**Author's Note:**

> Done with a certain livejournal comm in mind, in which the objective is to include a set of lies in your work. I chose the following set: 
> 
> 1\. I'm glad we met.  
> 2\. Of course we're friends.  
> 3\. I'm not afraid.  
> 4\. It's so cold out here, I’m freezing (hint, hint).  
> 5\. I feel fine.  
> 6\. I've never wanted anything more.

Kanda doesn’t lie. Lavi had guessed that about him the moment they met, and it was more than his not-there Japanese honor. It was his inability to deal with the tedious, and his willingness to be upsetting. He’d never withhold the truth to spare someone’s feelings, and he’d never beat around the bush or tell an outright lie when stating straight facts was the quickest way to get things done.

But lies and sarcasm were two very different things. And Kanda knows how to use his words to bite. His hastily-learned and seldom accented English is easily aimed to sting, as determined as he is to keep others away.

So Lavi is really the worst companion for Kanda, because Lavi will always ignore the jibes. He shrugs them off with a smile and gets right back to teasing, telling Kanda he’s really getting too worked up over a little braiding. It might have made him look less feminine. (And oh, Kanda hates, hates, remarks on his hair, but Lavi won’t stop because he was there for the last time a forward drunk told Kanda he was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.)

(“You have to admit it was funny, Yu.”

“Your face is going to be bloodier than his was.”)

(So testy.)

“I’m so glad we met,” was the first thing Kanda ever said to him, right after Lavi introduced himself, and he’d walked away with hardly a change in expression, and Lavi had stared after him with the most idiotic grin on his face.

And hadn’t that just been the start of things, the epitome of examples, because that’s how all of their meetings went. Lavi was all smiles and antagonistic teasing, and Kanda was full of sneers and snappish threatening.

“Of course we’re friends,” Lavi had said to Allen’s incredulous stare and Lenalee’s knowing giggle. Because weren’t they? Didn’t Kanda tolerate his presence better than everyone else? Hadn’t he grown accustomed to Lavi seeking him out? Weren’t those icy glares that much softer when they were pointed toward Lavi? Weren’t they?

(Except that was a lie. Lavi couldn’t have friends.)

(Lavi couldn’t have friends, so why was his firmly trained mind focusing on these people, this person, those feelings, the things he didn’t have? Why had used what he’d been taught to set up a blockade, to cordon off the thought of the old man deciding they were leaving?

“I’m not afraid,” is what he tells himself, is what’s written on that wall in his head, and it sounds true enough.)

On a lonely mission, putting up in an earnest ski lodge for the night, the fireplace does its job well.

“Pretty chilly in here, don’t’cha think?” Lavi holds back the grin, replaces it with a naïve smile, friendly, truthful.

Kanda rolls his eyes, says nothing.

So Lavi wonders how far to push it, gives a put-upon sigh and begrudgingly answers “the floor” when Kanda asks, thinks about how he’s not been ignorable, unnoticeable, not with the closeness he keeps, not with the eye contact he’s always trying for, not with half the time beating Lenalee to ask Kanda how his mission went. Subtlety doesn’t really suit Lavi.

So he forces a shiver, makes a show of tossing and turning and punching his pillow, and when later he climbs into the bed and Kanda says nothing even though Lavi knows he’s awake, he wonders how much of Kanda is an act.

Later, the old man is on him the morning after. Of course he is, because nothing escapes his opaque knowledge for long, certainly not an indiscretion of this magnitude. The lecture he gets is what he expects, one of sin and indifference, objectivity and fraternizing. And Lavi keeps calm through it, smiles through it, because to lose any of his temper would be to condemn himself and prove correct the accusations of bias.

He shrugs and tells his master not to worry, tries not to sound too earnestly nonchalant as to be obviously fabricated. He’s good at that, at putting on a face; he’s got 48 others as proof. So it’s easy to smile and tell Lenalee he feels fine when she sees his uneaten dinner and asks if he’s okay.

But he starts to wonder what price there is to pay for attempting to put away the title of Bookman. He doesn’t know if it’s ever been done. He doesn’t know what his master would do, whether he’d find a new apprentice or forcibly remove Lavi from the Order. Lavi knows there isn’t a middle ground; there isn’t space for fighting the rules, no loopholes. The Bookman spends life alone, unbiased, and he’s far from unbiased when it comes to Kanda.

Kanda doesn’t want to talk about it, not just because it’s theoretical and he has no patience for ‘what if’s and ‘maybe’s, but for other, deeper and more sacred reasons. Lavi gets the full force of Kanda’s displeasure, the biting derision and sneering looks of disgust.

Lavi knows what his choice is, has known all along. Even if his deliberations were real, he’d known, in truth, that it couldn’t truly happen. Still, when Kanda reminds him that he’s been training his whole life for this, it burns. And when Kanda asks, half-acerbic and maybe not expecting an answer, does he even want the job anymore, it’s harder than it should be to look him in the eye and say he’s never wanted anything more.


End file.
